The Good Life on Te Muna Road

by Deb­o­rah Coddington Ran­dom House, pa­per­back, 320 pages $40 The first time Deb­o­rah Coddington lived in Mart­in­bor­ough, it was the height of the hippy era, but the mu­sic stopped when, crushed by debts, she and her part­ner Alis­ter Tay­lor were forced to leave town. Nearly 40 years on, with a suc­cess­ful ca­reer as a jour­nal­ist, a new hus­band, a stint as a restau­ra­teur and a term in Par­lia­ment be­hind her, Deb­o­rah re­turned to Mart­in­bor­ough not quite sure of the wel­come she would re­ceive. She writes of find­ing a com­mu­nity full of out­stand­ing and en­ter­tain­ing in­di­vid­u­als who demon­strate the can-do, all-in-this-to­gether spirit of pro­vin­cial New Zealand, lays some ghosts to rest, writes mov­ingly about the death of her mother, de­tails the vi­cis­si­tudes of be­ing a wine grower, and shares the joy of life with her beloved an­i­mals.